Ever heard anyone moaning about the long hours they work and how they’re at work so long they’re earning minimum wage? I have, so decided to work out how long each of these people must be working to come to that conclusion (as you do).

As we all know, there are 365 days in a year. Of these, 104 are Saturdays or Sundays and in our line of work, those days are non-working days - which leaves us 261 weekdays. Every employee of a British company not engaged in essential services (i.e. Healthcare workers, Police Officers, Firefighters, etc.) is entitled to a day off on each of the 8 public holidays observed in the UK, which leaves us with 253 workable days in the average year.

In all likelihood, this figure will actually become around 229 days worked, due to holiday allowance - but this allowance is paid leave, so we won’t remove these days.

To the best of my knowledge, the minimum wage amount set out by the Government is a pre-tax figure. For anyone over the age of 22, this figure currently stands at £5.52 p/h. So what we want to know is how many hours someone would need to work in order to reach this figure from an annual salary at a level suitable for the position this sort of person is in.

I’m not in a position to say how much the employee in question earns in a year, but I know for a fact that it’s a fair bit more than I do. So let’s add a lump sum on to mine so that we don’t start disclosing what I make (identity theft is a terrible thing, kids) and do some sums.

£30000 / 253 = £118.58 per working day
£118.58 / £5.52 = 21.5 (approx.) hours
Now I’m no medical expert, but I’m pretty sure anyone who worked 21.5 hours of every 24 during the week would look a lot more tired than the person who inspired this little “investigation”. I’ve come to the conclusion that they were what we call in the business “exaggerating”.